Today, we got the official look and specs of the new 2018 Mazda6, which will come with a torquey turbocharged engine. Awesome! What was not so awesome was the fact that the turbocharged version will not come with a manual option. Goddammit, you guys!

Driving stick is something my mom said is a nice skill to add to the Toolbox of Life. My blog boss said it’s good to know because, hey, maybe you need to drive the getaway car one day, and in this hypothetical, the getaway car has a manual transmission. But I first learned how to drive stick in the early hours of Nov.…

Few subjects are as sore among the Porsche faithful as the company’s refusal to put a manual transmission in the current 991 generation of their mad track weapon, the 911 GT3 RS. Now one heroic owner is doing what Porsche should have done from the factory by putting a manual transmission into his own 991.1 GT3 RS.

Like most Jalops, I regularly wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, drenched in sweat, screaming the phrase “save the manuals.” It’s an issue that I’ve been working on with my therapist for months, but I think I’ve finally cracked it—I’m now done worrying about manuals going extinct.

BMW is looking to save some cash as it invests in electric, hybrid and autonomous vehicles. To do so, Reutersreports,the company is going to drop manual variants of the BMW 2 Series, one of Jalopnik’s favorite cars—which seems like the opposite of getting their mojo back. But BMW’s U.S. spokespeople dispute the…

We all know that manual transmissions are becoming more and more rare, and outside of a few niche cars targeted at archaic oily old bastards like myself and most of our readership, they’ll be gone. That got me thinking about ways that some of the manual-shifting experience may be able to be preserved, and that led me…

I should be honest and mention that our editor-in-chief, Patrick George, doesn’t think this is A Thing. Raph and David, my co-writers and fellow shitbox-owners, do. So now I’m curious as to how widespread this practice is. Manual transmission drivers: do you ever shift in such a way as to help keep you from speeding?

Right after Porsche got our hopes up by adding a manual transmission as an option for the 2018 911 GT3, their head of GT cars brought us right back down by saying that six-speed won’t be used in the more hardcore GT3 RS. I thought you understood us, Porsche? I thought we had a thing?

Bless us, every one, for Porsche listens to us after all. They listened! They care! The 2018 Porsche 911 GT3 will give buyers the choice of Porsche’s ultra-fast paddle-shifted PDK transmission or a glorious good old three-pedal six-speed manual transmission, per a Porsche press release. Rejoice!

Shouldn’t driving a manual be a prerequisite for the leader of the free world, anyway? I mean, what if you’re being chased by a herd of evil robot Pomeranians controlled by Dr. No and your only getaway car is a 1979 Yugo? You have to think of these things when you’re president, you know.

We’ve known that the blessed, blissful Ferrari gated manual was on its way out. Everything has to be paddle-shifted for performance, you see, but maybe it was possible to get one on special order. But no, you won’t even get those anymore. The Ferrari gated manual is officially dead.

The 2017 Audi A4 is thoroughly updated from the previous-generation A4, even if it doesn’t look like much has changed. There is, however, one bright and shining ray of hope for all involved: this fall its all-wheel drive Quattro version will go on sale with a manual gearbox. You should buy it that way.

We all know the charmingly gruff Jeep Wrangler will be more modernized for the next generation “JL” due in 2018. But rumor has it the company is now asking customers how they’d feel about no more manual transmissions.

Much as we must all learn important and relevant skills like how to revulcanize your own tires and how to start your car with a hand crank, we all have to learn how to drive stick shift. But which car should be your learner vehicle?